Here Charity, heaving disconsolate sighs,
That said "I admit what I deeply deplore,"
Uplifted to heaven her tear-suffused eyes,

Which seemed but to anger her sister the more.

"Nay, none of your cant, hypocritical minx!" She cried in a louder and bitterer tone, "If you feel any fancy to whimper, methinks "You might weep that the days of my glory are

gone.

"What wreck of my palmy puissance is left? "What bravos and bullies my greatness declare? "Of the holy and dear Inquisition bereft,

"All my fierce fulminations are impotent air!"

With the look of an angel, the voice of a dove, Thus Charity answered "Since Concord alone "Can prosper our partnership mission of love

"And exalt the attraction that calls her her own,

"I would not, dear sisters, e'en harbor a thought

...

"That might peril a friendship so truly divine; “And if in our feelings a change has been wrought, “I humbly submit that the change is not mine....

"But now when men, turning from dogmas to deeds, "Bear the scriptural dictum of Jesus in mind, “That salvation depends not on canons and creeds, "But on love of the Lord and the love of our kind,

"My voice can be heard, and my arguments weighed, "Which explains why such numerous converts of late

"Are under my love-breathing standard arrayed, "Who once, beneath yours, were excited to hate.

"Superstition must throw off Religion's disguise;

"For men, now enlightened, not darkling, like owls, "While they reverence priests who are holy and wise, "Will no longer be hoodwinked by cassocks or cowls.

"If, sisters! forgetting your primitive troth,

"You would still part the world into tyrants and slaves,

"What wonder that sages should look on you both "As the virtues of dupes for the profits of knaves?

"You would separate? Do so

scope;

I give you full

"But reflect, you are both of you nought when we

part;

"While I, 'tis well known, can supply Faith and

Hope,

"When I choose for my temple an innocent heart."

MORAL ALCHEMY.

THE toils of Alchemists, whose vain pursuit
Sought to transmute

Dross into gold, — their secrets and their store
Of mystic lore,

What to the jibing modern do they seem?
An ignis fatuus chase, a phantasy, a dream!

Yet for enlightened moral Alchemists

There still exists

A philosophic stone, whose magic spell

No tongue may tell,

Which renovates the soul's decaying health,

And what it touches turns to purest mental wealth.

This secret is revealed in every trace

Of Nature's face,

To smiling ends,

Whose seeming frown invariably tends

Transmuting ills into their opposite,

And all that shocks the sense to subsequent delight.

Seems Earth unlovely in her robe of snow?

Then look below,

Silent and dark,

Where Nature in her subterranean Ark,

Already has each floral germ unfurled

-

That shall revive and clothe the dead and naked world.

Behold those perished flowers to earth consigned -
They, like mankind,
Seek in their grave new birth. By nature's power,
Each in its hour,

Clothed in new beauty, from its tomb shall spring,
And from its tube or chalice heavenward incense fling.

Laboratories of a wider fold

I now behold,

Where are prepared the harvests yet unborn

Of wine, oil, corn. —

In those mute rayless banquet halls I see

Myriads of coming feasts with all their revelry.

Yon teeming and minuter cells enclose

The embryos

Of fruits and seeds, food for the feathered race,

Whose chanted grace,

Swelling in choral gratitude on high,

Shall with thanksgiving anthems melodize the sky.—

And what materials, mystic Alchemist!

To fabricate this ever-varied feast,

Dost Thou enlist

For man, bird, beast?

Whence the life, plenty, music, beauty, bloom?

From silence, languor, death, unsightliness, and

gloom!

From Nature's magic hand, whose touch makes sadness

Eventual gladness,

The reverent moral Alchemist may learn

The art to turn

Fate's roughest, hardest, most forbidding dross,

Into the mental gold that knows not change or loss.

Lose we a valued friend?- To soothe our woe

Let us bestow

On those who still survive an added love,

So shall we prove,

Howe'er the dear departed we deplore,

In friendship's sum

and substance no diminished

Lose we our health?

Now may we fully know

What thanks we owe

For our sane years, perchance of lengthened scope:

Now does our hope

Point to the day when sickness, taking flight,

Shall make us better feel health's exquisite delight.

In losing fortune, many a lucky elf

Has found himself.

As all our moral bitters are designed

To brace the mind,

And renovate its healthy tone, the wise

Their sorest trials hail as blessings in disguise.